


i missed you yesterday (but now you're in my story)

by waterophelia



Category: Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 09:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24847786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterophelia/pseuds/waterophelia
Summary: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”(or how Karen learns that she didn't have anything)
Relationships: Karen Blixen/Denys Finch Hatton





	i missed you yesterday (but now you're in my story)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [tęskniłam za tobą wczoraj (ale jesteś w mojej historii)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24847072) by [waterophelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterophelia/pseuds/waterophelia). 



She doesn’t want marriage as much as she craves freedom; she doesn’t want marriage as much as she wants the feeling that she doesn’t belong to anyone, that she only belongs to herself. That she has things for herself, like she never did before.

Or maybe: she thought she did, she thought she had father who makes her planes from paper and tells her to write about what feels true; nine-year-old Karen blinks, her loving, reminiscent eyes looking up to father and asks how can she know what is true, and ten-year-old Karen knows that what is true is that her father took his own life and not went to some other world she might follow him into. Ten-year-old Karen grabs her mother’s hand and asks why dad is gone, and her mother looks somewhere far away above her head, maybe at the sky, maybe at the cliffs, maybe at seagull flying away, and Karen realises that her mother is not hers too.

She become baroness Blixen to have something.

She becomes baroness Blixen and tells Denys that the farm is hers, that the people are hers, that hers is the plantation and she doesn’t understand yet why is Denys laughing.

Only later she becomes aware how actually she really is just passing through here. Her stories are just passing through, the coffee trees are just passing through, as anything can take them anytime, the house is passing through, even the cuckoo clock and paper stationery, so faithfully covered by her with neat letters.

Only later she becomes aware how wonderful is being instead or owning. Africa hits her differently than she could ever count for and for a while she wonders if it was like that with every country that belongs to her stories, if America would dazzle her in the same way, if Chinese men were so different - but it’s neither America nor China that have place in her heart now. She lives on the farm and finds love in a place where she would never look for love, where she never even wanted to find love. The coffee is growing and Karen jumps blithely among seedlings, drunk with joy. Fields stretch for miles everywhere around her and they made it, those little things actually managed to grow at an altitude where everyone only frown upon earlier and Karen, who has words for every occasion, lacks words. It’s all so different than she imagined, but she wouldn’t dream it in wildest dreams.

Denys takes her high in the sky and teaches how to observe savanna from the bird’s eye view. Shows her which places lions usually choose for den and they look for them together, excited and overjoyed, this time without any fear.

Denys gives her what he can, a piece of himself, next piece, so much that she knows how frightened he must be by that. He leaves clothes at her place and chooses his own room for keeping rifles, plants his own sapling and buys night table for the other side of the bed.

Karen learnt that Africa is not for owning, that the people and the farm and the plantation and even the school don’t belong to her, but she didn’t learn yet that you can’t own love too, and she wants more than pieces. He gives her more and more and she wants what he can’t give, because ten-year-old Karen decided that one day she will have someone for herself.

Denys leaves and there is not more stories, even though the stories always were beside her, even where her father died, even when she broke her mother’s heart for the second time, running away rom Denmark, even when she discovered that her husband gave her syphilis. Denys leaves and comes back and then leaves for good, and Karen is left with just one story to tell. And she tells about a man who was never hers, but who showed her hair blowing and stealing hats wind, heat sweeping off the feet and moist air, animals running before her eyes and flash of light in the gloom of night. She tells about a mean who taught her not to be afraid of coolness and not to run from lionesses, how to hold a rifle and talk to natives, watch the moon and wipe sweat from face during hunt. Maybe this men wasn’t hers and maybe she wasn’t his, but he gave her what he could and Karen tells the story of Denys falling asleep in wicker armchair in the terrace of their house, and that’s all she has, their story, she doesn’t even have Africa anymore - and she thinks that ten-year-old Karen would spurn the story she owns, but she went a long way from the times of ten-year-old Karen and she doesn’t want anything more.

**Author's Note:**

> I watched "Out of Africa" approximately three times and I still can't believe Denys's death, and at the same time it was such an amazing ending that I'm actually out of breath. And the "we’re not owners here we’re just passing through", pure magic.
> 
> Also, that's a translation of my polish fic so very sorry for all possible mistakes.


End file.
